Product Managers: Your peers say you should read these articles

The most successful people read. In fact, many influential entrepreneurs and those looking to better their craft have a habit of reading on a daily basis.

But reading that often is easier said than done. It’s not just the time it takes to read. Finding quality content takes time as well.

We wanted to help you out. So we’ve asked some successful product managers from the productboard community for the posts they send to all new PMs who join their team.

This is their list.

MVPM: Minimum Viable Product Manager

Product management! What a thrill to work in a role that spans design, tech, and business…

So thought Brandon Chu, product director of Shopify — but as he warns, don’t try to master everything at once. Within each discipline there are certain things you should master and others you should bypass as you work to excel in your role.

3 Types of Product Management: Which One is Right For Your Company?

Everyone with “product manager” on their business card may have the same job title on paper, but their day-to-day roles can vary greatly from company to company.

Here’s another experienced PM’s take on the amorphous role of the product manager. As Daniel Demetri explains, different PMs have different degrees of specialization in the fields of business, design, and technology, and that’s ok.

Read on to determine where you land, or to isolate the ideal blend of skills your company needs for your next PM hire.

Designing Your Product’s Continuous Feedback Loop

Every great product comes from capturing user feedback and surfacing it at the right time to make better prioritization and design decisions.

But as Sachin Rekhi points out, most companies fall short in this area by treating user feedback collection as a point-in-time activity rather than an ongoing activity. Read on for a description of the “feedback river” Rekhi established for pulling in user insights from 10+ channels.

Why Chefs and Soldiers Make the Best Product Managers

This is a fantastic article from First Round Review on the type of mindset that great product managers share. Whether you’re looking to hire a great product manager or become one yourself, you’ll find this article a helpful reminder of the traits you should aim to exhibit.

The Power of the Elastic Product Team — Airbnb’s First PM on How to Build Your Own

How do you remain nimble, visionary, and outcome-driven as your organization scales? Jonathan Goldman, Airbnb’s first ever PM and current Director of Product, explains the company’s fluid approach to assembling (and disbanding) teams.

“A lot of people call me and ask how they should structure their product organizations. I always tell them to do it based on outcome. If you do it based on features, then you’re going to be perpetuating those features [and those teams] whether they’re useful or not.”

If you’re a product manager at a rapidly scaling organization, or a product leader in an enterprise company, this one’s for you.

How to Work With Designers

“For all the PMs out there wondering how to crack the strange, retina-sharp, helvetica-typed world of design: this is for you.”

Julie Zhuo, VP of Product Design at Facebook, offers sage advice for communicating with designers, and understanding the different strengths designers with various backgrounds and seniority may bring to the team.

Above all, remember that the most direct path to a designer’s heart is to care about the details.

What do you recommend?

Whether you’ve worked your way through the entire list above or added the most intriguing to your Pocket, we hope you’ve walked away reinvigorated with some new tips and mindsets to succeed in your product role!

Have a great book, article, or podcast you’d recommend to other product managers? Leave a comment below our join the discussion in our #productleaders customer Slack community.